Chapter 72 – Extra: Wife, Why Isn’t the Kid Asleep Yet?
The wealthy family’s eldest sister-in-law adjusted the collar of his shirt, bent down to pick up the eldest grandson of the household from the floor, and walked out of the bedroom without looking back, leaving the eldest son standing there utterly bewildered in the wind.
The diligent little Sweet Baby lay sprawled on Bai He’s shoulder, waved his cleaning cloth, and said,
“I’m all done wiping! Uncle Eldest, you can go sleep-sleep now.”
Lu Lou: “Mm, thank you.”
The considerate and polite little one happily pressed his soft cheek against Uncle Bai He’s face. He smelled a sweet pomelo-blossom fragrance—it was the scent of body wash. Suddenly thinking of something, he shouted loudly to his uncle:
“Uncle Eldest, I have a little brother now!”
Lu Lou froze. His expression became unreadable. His first thought, of course, went straight to Bai He. Even though their sex life wasn’t frequent, still… it wasn’t impossible!
The kid was from the bee clan. Just like how clan members could sense the queen bee’s mating-flight state when they met her—when the little one hugged Bai He and sniffed just now, had he smelled the aura of pregnancy?
In that instant, Lu Lou even imagined himself applying for paternity leave like Third Brother Lu.
Bai He looked at Lu Lou. “President Lu, are you thinking about something strange?”
Lu Lou calmed down. “No.”
The little brother might belong to First Brother or Third Brother’s family. Judging by Bai He’s attitude, it couldn’t possibly be his.
The little one shouted, “Little brother, let’s go.”
In the corner, the robot vacuum slowly lit up with a ring of blue light and quietly glided away from beside Lu Lou’s feet, sneaking off as if afraid of being blamed.
“…” One glance was enough to know that Sixth Brother Lu had modified the vacuum again.
Lu Lou couldn’t conveniently chase after it. He walked to the window to calm down. Every south-facing window overlooked the flowerbeds below, where flowers competed in brilliance and beauty, while people admired and cared for them.
Like Bai He, he treated the child as his own. Setting everything else aside—if Meng Xueyuan hadn’t gotten pregnant and Bai He hadn’t moved in, how could he have caught up so quickly? The kid was his little assist.
He’d been too hasty—he hadn’t even noticed something as conspicuous as a robot vacuum carrying a kid.
Driving was like sex, sex was like driving. Traffic rules clearly stated that before starting a car, you should walk around it once—especially for high-chassis vehicles, you had to check underneath in case animals were hiding there.
So: walk around the bed once. Check under the bed.
Lu Lou summarized the rule—but had no intention of sharing it with Lu Yushu. Lu Yushu had just gone on a business trip today.
No one had shared experience with him when he was pursuing someone; he’d only gotten roadblocks.
Leaning against the window and letting the breeze blow, Lu Lou reflected that the main reason he and Bai He had closed the door so early, before it even got dark, was that the little one was an enthusiastically fair “cup-balancer.” Every family member—whether heading to work, coming home, or leaving on a business trip—would receive the child’s earnest farewell or welcome.
Usually, when the family lined up to leave for work in the morning, the kid would see them off one by one at the car doors, pressing cheeks together, hugging—
“Daddy, work hard!”
“Uncle, get off work on time!”
After that whole process, they’d get tangled up at the door for a full hour.
Lu Lou recalled the past—when they were young and Shen Ning went on business trips, there weren’t this many procedures, right?
Clearly, Lu Xiao and Meng Xueyuan were the youngest in the family. By seniority, Big Brother Lu and his secretary should both be called “uncle,” yet the kid somehow distinguished between “Uncle Eldest,” “Uncle Second,” and “uncle.”
He called Lu Fengge “Grandpa,” but occasionally also called Shen Ning “Ning-Ning.”
Though the titles were all mixed up, they sounded especially sweet.
If an uncle returned from a business trip after a long time away, the kid wouldn’t be shy at all. Instead, he’d hug his little pillow and come over, sleeping right between uncle and uncle.
Yes—although Lu Lou still had chances to be intimate with Bai He during the day, tonight was impossible. No wonder he’d been a bit impatient.
Still, Bai He putting the kid to sleep wouldn’t last long. Tomorrow, Meng Xueyuan would return from filming out of town, and the kid would throw himself back into his biological dad’s arms.
…
Day One.
Lu Xiao drove to the airport to pick up Meng Xueyuan. After seven days apart, the moment he got his wife into the car, Lu Xiao pretended to help fasten the seatbelt, leaned over, and kissed him.
Meng Xueyuan indulged him for three minutes, then pushed him away.
“Hurry up. You have no sense of time—but your son does.”
Lu Xiao muttered that the round trip took fifty minutes anyway. If he kissed five minutes more, it would be swallowed up by the drive. How would the kid notice?
“Today I squeezed in time to get his ID card done,” Lu Xiao said with a grin. “Once you have ID, it’s easy to go anywhere—no need to carry the household register. The kid smiled so hard during the photo shoot that his eyes turned into crescents.”
He kept reminding him, “Baby, be serious. Don’t smile. Close your mouth—Dad knows you’re happy, open your eyes a bit more…”
Lu Xiao said, “I have the finished photos on my phone. You can take a look.”
Meng Xueyuan picked up Lu Xiao’s phone, unlocked it with his fingerprint, opened the album, and saw Sweet Baby pursing his lips, staring solemnly at the camera.
Obviously an act.
Meng Xueyuan couldn’t help recalling when he and Lu Xiao got their marriage certificate. In the photo, he looked aloof and cold, but in reality he’d been secretly psyching himself up in the restroom—afraid that if the photographer asked him to smile, he wouldn’t be able to control himself and give it away. Would Lu Xiao still want to marry him if he knew he was such a face-obsessed person? Better to avoid a difficult divorce later.
Lu Xiao: “…Wife, those eight minutes you spent in the restroom were among the longest eight minutes of my life.”
He’d been terrified that Meng Xueyuan might have climbed out the restroom window and run off.
While waiting at a long red light, Lu Xiao opened the marriage-certificate photo on Meng Xueyuan’s phone and compared it to their son’s ID photo.
The brows and eyes were similar. The expressions were similar.
Damn… so when this father and son put on a cold, aloof look, even the curve of their mouths was identical.
He’d been fooled like an idiot and scared stiff.
Lu Xiao discovered another joy of raising a child: searching for Meng Xueyuan’s genetic expressions anytime, anywhere.
Just as he was about to demand compensation from his wife for being fooled, Meng Xueyuan preemptively said, “Impossible tonight.”
Lu Xiao: “Oh.”
Meng Xueyuan casually picked up Lu Xiao’s household register from the center console. His own registration in Baihua Village wasn’t being moved; for the kid’s schooling convenience, the child’s registration was placed under Lu Xiao.
After marrying Meng Xueyuan, Lu Xiao had opened his own household register, secretly hoping his wife would be added to his—or he’d be added to his wife’s. Either way, he wouldn’t need to use the family’s main register and let his brother find out…
Several years later, his once-solo household register really had one more person on it—no, one kid.
Meng Xueyuan flipped open the first page.
Head of household: Lu Xiao.
First page: Head of household himself, Lu Xiao—married.
Third page: Meng Lingxiao. Relationship to head of household: son.
Baihua Village liked names that included a type of flower. Combined with the kid’s love of climbing, they chose the name of a climbing plant—the trumpet creeper, lingxiao flower.
Trumpet creepers climb upward, blooming into little trumpet-shaped flowers.
Lu Xiao was very satisfied with the name. He felt it included both Meng Xueyuan’s surname and his own given name, recalling the line “Phoenix pavilions and dragon towers reach the heavens.” Shen Ning had mistakenly written characters leaving a permanent typo on Lu Xiao’s name.
Big Brother and Second Brother’s names were also written with mistakes by Shen Ning—but theirs were missing strokes, while Lu Xiao’s was a completely wrong character.
Lu Lou and Lu Yushu corrected theirs. Lu Xiao’s stayed wrong—because the “?” under the roof radical had fewer strokes.
Baby Lingxiao helped clear his dad’s name.
When Meng Xueyuan later realized that the kid’s name had once again inadvertently poked fun at Shen Ning, it was already too late to change it. When introducing Lingxiao’s name, he firmly denied that it included Lu Xiao’s name.
“Dad Ning, it’s a kind of climbing plant—the lingxiao flower.”
Shen Ning: “……”
Half an hour later, Lu Xiao parked the car in the courtyard. The moment the engine shut off, Baby Lingxiao’s ears perked up and he tossed aside the building blocks in his hands.
“Daddy’s home!”
With a fierce charge, the moment Lu Xiao and Meng Xueyuan opened the door, the kid couldn’t brake in time. Meng Xueyuan hurriedly opened his arms, just in time for the kid to crash into his embrace.
Since he’d been taught from a young age not to bump into people, Baby Lingxiao cleverly used his knees as brakes—thump—and knelt straight down before his two dads.
Meng Xueyuan, heart aching, picked up the filial child and rubbed his knees.
“Does it hurt, baby?”
Baby Lingxiao hugged his neck. “It doesn’t hurt. Daddy, I missed you so much.”
Seven days without seeing him—and he’d missed him terribly.
Meng Xueyuan: “I missed you too, baby.”
“Help me a bit,” Meng Xueyuan said, asking Lu Xiao to shift the kid onto his back. Holding him was inconvenient.
Lu Xiao: “I’ll carry him.”
Meng Xueyuan: “It’s fine.”
Lu Xiao could only tell his son, “Daddy doesn’t have much strength—can only carry you for a little while.”
Baby Lingxiao nodded and obediently lay on Meng Xueyuan’s back.
His grip was strong; he didn’t need to be supported. Still, most adults wouldn’t be so carefree.
Meng Xueyuan prepared honey water for the kid. Lu Xiao supported the kid’s bottom from behind, taking all the weight in his palms.
Meng Xueyuan poured the honey water into a straw cup and held it out.
“Let’s go play in the park.”
“Okay!” Baby Lingxiao immediately flopped backward into Lu Xiao’s arms, slid down to the ground, ran to the entryway, opened the cabinet, and took out Daddy’s hat and mask.
Meng Xueyuan and Lu Xiao lightly covered their faces and took their son to the nearby park.
On a weekday afternoon, the park wasn’t crowded—mostly grandparents bringing kids. They had little curiosity about young people wearing hats.
The kid liked climbing poles in the sandbox. His posture often reminded Meng Xueyuan of Lu Xiao grabbing vines and swinging across riverbanks.
It had rained in the morning. Uneven ground had turned into small puddles, and the sandbox was too wet to play in. The kid took a sip of honey water and hopped around in the puddles, splashing water. When tired, he’d run back to Daddy for another sip.
Lu Xiao quietly watched him burn off energy.
“Grandpa, I want to play too,” another child of similar age said enviously.
“No, you can’t,” the grandpa hurriedly picked the child up. “There are bacteria in the water, and if your shoes get wet, your mom will scold you.” Then he said to Lu Xiao and Meng Xueyuan, “Why don’t you control him? That puddle’s all dirt—look how dirty he is.”
He actually wasn’t dirty. Baby Lingxiao knew how to avoid muddy spots.
Lu Xiao: “Mm.”
Meng Xueyuan: “We are controlling him.”
They watched the elderly man leave—without doing anything further.
This was also why they hadn’t hired anyone to care for the child. He was too precious. Anyone else would feel pressured, afraid he’d get hurt, and end up restricting his movements. Better for family members to take turns—at least one of them could relax.
Once the kid had played enough and came back to lean against Daddy, the two of them took him home for a bath.
“Daddy works so hard.”
“I love Daddy.”
Clean and cozy, the kid lay on the bed, drinking the formula Daddy earned for him. He’d take a sip, pull out the bottle nipple, and softly say, “I love Daddy.”
Lu Xiao listened to him repeat that for half an hour—the bottle was almost empty.
“Wife, why isn’t he asleep yet? I’ve been waiting so long the flowers are withering.”
Meng Xueyuan was waiting too, but answered honestly, “They’re not withered.”
Lu Xiao grew anxious. It turned out the kid still hadn’t burned off all his energy from the afternoon.
After finishing the last sip, the vine baby rolled over and climbed up.
“Daddy, recharge.”
Every time he finished drinking milk, he always remembered the robot vacuum.
Grandpa had built him a climbing room. He could climb really, really high. Today, the park’s sand had been soaked, and he hadn’t played on the exercise equipment—no wonder he couldn’t sleep.
“Daddy, I still want to play.”
Lu Xiao called the robot vacuum over, opened the cleaning-route app on his phone, and planned a path leading to Big Brother’s bedroom door.
He lifted the kid and placed him on the vacuum.
“Go.”
Your uncle is frigid—go play with them tonight.
